Most businesses look fine online but never earn real trust. Trevor Gibbs breaks down what's actually keeping customers away, and how to fix it.
GROWTH PILLAR: Marketing & Branding
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear way to check if their website is actually trustworthy, why accessibility and data privacy matter more than they think, and how to turn reviews into real growth.
Most businesses aren't losing customers because they're bad at what they do. They're losing them because they're invisible online.
Trevor Gibbs runs The Web Detective, a firm that helps businesses build a trustworthy, findable online presence. In this episode, he explains the difference between a digital thumbprint and a digital footprint, why showing up on more platforms beats shouting louder on one, and why testimonials don't carry the same weight as reviews. He also covers website accessibility — and the quarter of the population most businesses accidentally shut out — plus the basics of data privacy compliance and where AI helps or hurts.
Connect with Trevor: LinkedIn · Blog
Free offer: Get your free web audit
— PARTNERS ON THIS EPISODE —
Next Steps
Bernie (00:22)
So, question of the audience. If someone searched your business right now, would they find a reason to trust you? That's not a trick question. Most businesses are invisible online, or worse, they look like they've got something to hide. Today's guest has spent years solving that exact problem.
One business at a time.
Trevor Gibbs has been working in the digital marketing for over two decades. He runs the Web Detective, a firm that helps businesses and non-for-profits build a trustworthy, findable online presence. Trevor's work covers everything from website accessibility and ADA compliance to online reputation, data compliance, and full digital strategy.
He actually works with small businesses and organizations that are tired of blending in and ready to actually be seen. What makes Trevor different is how he thinks about your online presence. He just doesn't build websites. He investigates, finding the gaps between where you are online and where your customers are looking. His tagline says it all.
So you can walk over the competition. Trevor also is a cook. Every Brazilian family claims is better than a local. You can find him at the webdetective.online or connect with him on LinkedIn. Search Trevor Gibbs, the web detective. Trevor, absolute pleasure having you back here today. Sir, thank you so much. What's been happening? Got a favorite quote or anything?
Trevor (01:40)
Favorite quote? No, I don't, apart from I I heard one has been a mile a minute, but I believe that might be one that you use quite frequently. Because it has. it's a pleasure to be back. Thank you for inviting me. may maybe I should rephrase that quote to it's been a mile a second. here we are already rushing through twenty twenty six. And it feels like we're still in the first couple of weeks. And we're not. We're nowhere near it. We're
Already into the second quarter.
Bernie (02:06)
So you started in traditional marketing for nonfor profits, and so how did that swing into the web detective? How did that evolve? W what's the genesis?
Trevor (02:15)
Well, before it was nonprofits, it was for business and nonprofits. I used to be a database marketer. So data has always been something I we've always looked at. And data actually tells you how well you do and also where you can go to next. It's quite surprising what it can tell you. It's not just the zeros and dots and numbers and sort of things. how the web detective came around was a little bit of necessity.
When I moved to the US, something came out called GDPR, which is the dental protection of data regulations, which came out of Europe and the UK. Knowing that was going to impact my business, I wasn't expecting it to kill my business because the nonprofits we were serving didn't know what to do. Now, if we look back at history, what people used to do is say, Hey, I've got half a million records here. I'm a cat charity. Mr. Dog charity, would you like half a million of our record for half a million of yours?
And of course, they would easily swap. They would just acquire data and mail out a hundred times, email thousand times, and never actually took into consideration the data subject, whether they wanted this information or not. And that's the real crux of data privacy. The data subjects in the right to accept or refuse, edit, change, or delete wherever their personal data happened to be held. So
There I was helping nonprofits and Mr. Covid comes along because I had an engagement tool at that time, trying to market them to engage with their community. A little bit where they say, hey, put all this information in one place on your mobile app, incentivize your local business and donors to connect, and earn a discount and send a donation to the charity. But of course, Mr. Covid didn't like people meeting and I didn't have the heart to tell them, well, you've got to keep paying for a service you can't use. So Web Detective starts.
Arising mainly because somebody challenged me that I don't know if your app is accessible to people with disabilities. What he really meant by that was the website content I was using in the app was not accessible. So going down that line, I went, here's something new. And while we all got online and nobody knew about it, I realized through my past industry acclamations, the peers industries I'd have worked in, everything.
Revolves around one simple thing. We like to build trust. We want to be reputable. And that only comes from the interactions we have with our clients. So customer reputation, customer relationships is paramount. No matter what you do for marketing, no matter what you do for advertising, no matter how you service them, it's always the after sales first. So I put that as a paramount first. And that's where the web detective came in, realizing that.
Everybody was talking about this the opposite way around.
Bernie (04:55)
How does a company realize that there's a gap? I mean, at the end of the day, if if you're walking, for example, you know, are you all are you walking the right way? Like how do you know you're you're missing something? Right. I mean, you're obviously progressing, you you you you have an action, you have a website that's up and running, you know what's there, but how do you know that there's a gap? You know, is it is your customer tell you, or is it
maybe the fact you're not having a certain type of customer, in which case it's like, you know, it it's like a negative a a negative retort coming back, you hear nothing and you expect to hear something, whether it's a positive or or or you know minus how how does a person or how does an agency figure that out?
Trevor (05:36)
An agency, well, yeah, that's much easier because we have tools to do that. If we do it to the business owner, the only thing they really have is the end result, number of clients. you don't know if you're doing it right. You don't know there's there is a little bit of a science to it. There is some algorithms that can help, but generally you start looking at a broad picture. Understand how search engines work is paramount.
Business owners generally and marketers think, get out there and advertise your business. Go for paid ads. Get your front, get yourself in front of masses of people. But what they fail to relate to the business owner is that they're concentrated maybe on one or two channels. Let's say businesses, LinkedIn, generally Facebook, Instagram, the social media channel seems to be where the masses congregate.
And that's true. But if you think about it, whenever you need a product or service, you don't go to those platforms to search for your product or service. You may search for a person, but never the product or service. And nine times out of ten, we're looking for product or service. We don't know the people we want to interact with. So what search engines do, instead of being on, let's say, Facebook, and you've got there's your
line of all your posts and here's all your line of posts over here on Instagram and LinkedIn. There's a very small snapshot. A very small because it's height driven. Done by quantity. Search engines go in the opposite direction. They go horizontally. They count the number of times you appear on different platforms. That is when you realize whether your business has been successful because you don't have a footprint. You've only got a thumbprint.
Hence the the expression. If you only appear in three or four platforms, your your print is very small. If you appear on twenty to thirty, you have a bigger footprint.
Bernie (07:24)
So I think cooking was where you started out, no, as a chef. And now you're in digital marketing. That that's quite the I I I guess you get customer feedback pretty quick as a chef, right?
Trevor (07:35)
Correct.
Bernie (07:35)
Is that is that kind of the basis for what you did for digital marketing? It's like, you know, gonna cook up some a great soup and no soup for you today scenario or what?
Trevor (07:44)
Exactly that. As I was mentioned a little bit earlier. All businesses run on reputation. As a chef, yeah, instant gratification or instant dislike. You can rectify it right there on the spot. And with a business, sometimes what happens is people reach out and complain, but they're afraid of backlash. So they wait a little bit and they say, Well, I don't want to put my face in front of somebody because I don't want to be
classed or labelled as a troublemaker, or somebody that's antagonist, and maybe I am by nature and I don't realise it, I'll just write a review online. It's a little safer.
Most businesses fail to respond to that within 24 hours because Google, take the biggest review platform there, will rank your business on the amount of time it takes you to respond to that review. Probably heard that before, but it's so essential because prompt customer response shows that you care about your business. That's what every client wants. So, yes.
I took that initial training by being a chef, we're in the catering trade, and thinking here we are today running businesses. We put our hat on because I'm the expert, the authority in the industry that I am. I know how to make sales, but I forget about what the results are, the impact are to the clients I have. And if we'd only listen to them a little bit more, our businesses would actually grow a lot quicker.
Bernie (09:05)
So this sounds like a transition where you were talking where we were talking earlier about the digital thumbprint and turning it into a footprint. Can you kind of expand on that?
Trevor (09:15)
Sure. As I say, appear on many platforms. That's the key. Now, are all of them good? Are all of them bad? All of them used all the time? No. To a search engine and even AI search engines, they don't care the quantity of people on those platforms. What they care about is one thing, how many times you appear. Two, the information you put there needs to be consistent.
So I think a lot of people have probably heard of Google Business, they've heard of Yelp, they've heard of Trustpilot. Now, quite a few people will end up by putting their business profiles on them, even places like LinkedIn and alignable and a business profile on Facebook, the social media channels. There happens to be an inconsistency sometimes between, this one I put my mobile phone number, this one I put my landline number, this one don't have a web address, this one has no
physical address because when not brick and mortar, but the other one does. Those inconsistencies will actually impact that digital print because it's looking for consistent information that's the same from one platform to the next, from one social media channel to the next. And as the web detective will come along and look at where are the gaps in that information? What information should you have there?
What information should you not have there? It's not just about the marketing message. First of all, I need to know the name of the owner of the company. How can I contact them? And why is it that emails seems to be the biggest way to hide from your public when you say I have a website, website.com. My email should be Bernie or Trevor at website.com.
So once you've got your domain.com, all of a sudden we use gmail outlook yahoo and we put maybe mrfuzzycat at yahoo.com. That is certainly not professional, and it certainly doesn't provide me with trust. And when we think about emails that arrive in our inbox today, and we're all
open to receiving emails. The biggest one that comes from a scammer or anybody trying to trick you come from those free web platforms of Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Outlook. And we instantly say, I'm gonna distrust that. But as a business owner, we put it on social media channels as a place of contact. That's not building trust either.
Bernie (11:35)
So if someone you you touched on Google Review as being a as a thing to pay attention, or it could be yelp. If someone gives you a testimony, is is that even more more worthy in weight, both for the people that are researching you as well as the search engines?
Trevor (11:53)
You said testimony. I see there's a difference between testimonials and reviews. Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, all of these look for reviews. And there is a difference between a testimonial and a review. The review is usually given on a platform that people can go in, check, validate where the review came from. Testimonials, on the other hand,
80% of them tend to appear only on one place, and that is on your own personal website. And what business owners do, they ask their best friends or their best clients or the friends and families, hey, write me a testimony about a service about how well we've done. And as a business owner, quite often we cherry-pick the nice sentences and paragraphs and put it into a block of text and paste it onto our website. And then just to
Confuse matters even more. It's signed by Bernie F, Canada. Trevor G. Florida. Well, how many Bernie S and Trevor G's are in those places? We can't validate it. And even sometimes we might put the profession of the person, broadcaster, marketer, doesn't even give us a company name to track. So
Everybody who's going to validate a business will only look at the reviews. They're not going to look just for the good ones, they want to see the bad ones. Once I find a bad one, most people in customer service will always tell you, how well did I react? How well did I respond? Did I manage to correct the problem? That's where you build the trust. That's when you know that this company cares. We don't mind you getting it wrong.
What we do mind about is that you ignore us when we you do get it wrong. That's your bad reputation. Again, same from when I used to be a chef. You know, if I said, no, that's the way you're going to have your dinner, and that's what it is, then lumping. And I can give you a little story of that. I I made a lamb casserole with rosemary. Now, if anybody knows rosemary is kind of like a a pine needle kind of little
relatively mint. So ladies tell, I have the lamb casserole, please. Gets home and she eats half it, comes back to the counter. I'm terribly sorry to complain. But I think somebody didn't clean the pot properly. I think there's some bristles of a brush in here. Could I have a new one please? Sure. So I'm sorry about that. Let's replace it instantly. Throw the the the plate away well not the actual plate but the dish and then reserved it. And the lady comes back again.
No, I think the whole batch must be contaminated. There's still bristles in there. So I'm rather confused. Can you point them out to me? Because I didn't see that in the first place. We just replaced it. yeah, look, here's one. Here's one. I was so sorry to tell you, ma'am. Maybe we should give you an alternative dish because that is what rosemary is. It's a herb. And they do look like little maybe bristles from a brush, but they are pine needles. Now here the client is right, but also wrong.
It was just far easier to give her an alternative dish and recommend something because obviously she wasn't happy with it. She would come back on a regular basis.
She came back on a regular basis just because you looked after me, I got educated today. Thank you. I'll be back again next week and she did come back. She did order the Lancassero again, that's for sure.
Bernie (15:02)
That's good. You wouldn't want to re rinse and repeat that whole story again.
Yeah, when you're building a website and you're trying to make sure you have all the gaps taken care of, like you know, whether whether it's you know proper links and links that work, you know, the you know the typical flopus. But accessibility sometimes if if you're not
If you're not experiencing an accessibility issue, you tend not to notice it unless of course, you know, you're you're helping somebody or you have a a relative or or a a friend that is that has that situation. How how do you kind of address the accessibility issues and and what impact does that have on a business?
Trevor (15:40)
Always. I'm gonna go with the impact first. I think this is the easiest way, and I'll give you some stats here. First of all, general stats in the US, Canada, whole world, on average, one in four people have a permanent disability. So that's a quarter of the population. Now, I have a website. Person with disability arrives at website and needs some extra tools or different ways to interact with your website.
And you provide it. That is amazing because you've now accommodated somebody with disabilities. Think about it. You've prepared your website for to be compliant and accessible to 25% of the population. Now, as a business strategy, you say, Why would I do that? The reason is because you've accommodated, and like you said, you you help friend or a family member.
to navigate the the website. Because they've been accommodated, the disabled person more likely to look up to the person who helped them, the aide, the carer, and say, this company cared. They accommodated me. And you say, let me have a look. What do they do? isn't that great? I think we should support them more. And tell you what, I'm going to tell the other people of the family, which happen to be seventy-five percent of the population, because I haven't found a whole family that are permanently disabled. It doesn't happen.
It probably does, but generally it doesn't. So now you're actually marketed through goodwill and by good reputation from the twenty-five percent that most businesses ignore, who now validate that you are a great business, to the seventy five percent where everybody else is sending all the noise and the chatter and the confusion. It's a better route to actually think about I can do something very easily. Now.
Here's some stats from the US. Most people at one time or other is going to have a temporary disability. I fall over and break my wrist, I fall over and maybe injure my foot. That's not going to you're injuring your foot's not going to really impact how you use a website. But maybe breaking my wrist would. Now, a temporary disability could also include a nursing mum. So why is that? Well, while mum is nursing her child.
She wants to get on to maybe the local grocery shop to order the the next set of diapers, or maybe she wants to go out and order some shoes or something. Well, most mothers don't keep the baby on their left arm for a long period of time. At some point they're going to switch. And because they switch, the mouse in which they have is probably designed for a right-handed person. So now I need to use the keyboard to navigate. Well, if the keyboard is not navigating your website.
Mum is going to say, tell you what, I'm not going to use this website, I'll go elsewhere. Because probably she do something else and leave your website and don't come back to it. Most other common temporary disability that most owners don't think about, web designers don't think about. If we are fortunate, we don't get it, but I don't know many that don't. At some point, mature aging folks who have corrective lenses.
We'll suffer with cataracts. Have you ever been to a website where the background pastel colours is the background colour? And then I'm going to use a gray text. Can you imagine what that looks like with somebody with a cataract? It's just a blur of mush and web lines there. I can't read it. I'm not going to return to this website next week. No, not next month, because most cataract cases last anywhere between one to two years.
Imagine the impact on your business from those people. I don't want to ask my grandchild or my husband or my wife to read this for me for every time because I'm not sure if I want this product yet. It's easier to go to a website that's got real big bold colors and a nice size font to read. So that would be the impact to look at how you design your website and why it's important to the end user as opposed to the disability.
Bernie (19:31)
Are you limited then by the technology of the events the the mouse and the keyboard? And I I get it. You know, sometimes if your mouse dies, right the batteries gone toasted, you're all you have is your your keyboard, right? And you have to know the alt tab button if you're on using a Microsoft platform operating system. And I'm not I think it's command something in for Apple.
Are websites is the software because you know I I I don't create the software, but I utilize the software to bring things together. So you know, to build a website. Are they all typically ready and able to help support that? Or is that something value add? Or even better yet, you know, where something reads the the website, how do I structure it so that I am compliant?
How do I pick the right product so I'm compliant? and or is it is it universal? just cause only for the fact that, you know, if if you've if you this is the first time you're starting something up, how do I know I can do it the best way possible and not mess it up too much with, you know, knowing that I probably have to go back and tweak things?
Trevor (20:35)
Lot of questions in there, Bernie. Thank you. I'll see you.
Bernie (20:37)
Trevor, you're absolutely welcome. It's like I'm sitting there going, Hang on, the squirrels are the rave. Here we go.
Trevor (20:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Let's let's see how we can do this. First of all, if you're building a website, whether you're a web developer or business owner trying to do it yourself, if you're using platforms that kind of give you a template to start with, no, they will not have the tools. First of all, let's take s and this is a scenario we're actually working live at the moment. I have a person who needs a screen reader to access content online. Believe it or not, she's also
knows how to edit and build websites. So when you go to the platform to build the website, most of those operating systems, if we call it an operating system, are not accessible to her screen reader. So what happens is she's now trying to navigate something which isn't really built for her at all to navigate because she doesn't have to see it. She just needs to know logically that point number six is add a text box.
Point number four is add an image. Point number okay, so now I know what it is, and I can roughly work out where it is because my screen reader helps to navigate it. The tools to build websites are not accessible. Platforms, let's say, where they provide templates for you where you don't own the website yourself, so therefore you can't custom code everything. Places like Square, GoDaddy, Wix, all those templated things, they are not.
Designed to be accessible. The reason is there's like a hundred and thirty different commands and codes to be used to make a website accessible. And there are different levels. You have A level, double A level, and triple A level. Industry standard will go to double A level because that encompasses most of the main problems. But occasionally you may need a triple A depending on
The people that you want to serve. Yeah, but it's a mammoth book, mammoth set of rules to understand. Nobody's really going to read it unless they're into accessibility or they're a great web developer and they know this because it's it's muscle memory. A lot of it is muscle memory. I put an alt text onto an image. Quite often a novice will take a photo with their cell phone, upload it, don't even think of the name of the photo.
Put it on website and leave it. Some web developers may come to, hang on, what's the name of your business? Let's let's put some SEO taglines in there. And again, Google being smart now realizes that this is just keyword stuffing, we're going to ignore it. So it doesn't help one little bit, especially if a screen reader gets there and it talks about the the marketing agency in whatever town it is, and say, but that don't tip out the the image.
So there's a lot of gaps that can be done. How does a business owner get there? Well, I said they can read the WCAG codes of what they should do. Ask a web developer. Ideally, find an accessibility specialist. There are tools that come where you can put them onto the website. Most of them tend to work to 2.1 level, which came out in 2008, 2018.
And if you read under, let's say Wix, one of them who does it, yes, we can add accessibility. Let's tell you that it does not comply to the normal standards. It only helps. most of the free widgets and plugins that you get, where you get this little disabled symbol at the bottom, and I can change the colours and I and I I theoretically I can change the the size of the text and it will give a description to the
the buttons that give a description to the headers. It does and it doesn't. There's very hit and miss. It all depends on how the website was originally coded. So it's not an easy task to make something totally accessible. And by that, where we come in it says most of the common areas of where you're going to fall are going to be on text sizes, color contrast, images.
labeling a functions and buttons and windows.
The best way is to remediate that in the code level of the HTML. Come along and do that. That's all the common ones. Also put the accessibility menu on there, which helps people with visually non-visual requirements to change what they want to how they see it. Now you have a more accessible website. Legally by law, you don't have to make it 100%, you have to make it accommodate it.
Because you've made your website accommodate, and if it ever gets in front of a judge, he's going to ask you, have they attempted to make the website accommodated? Tick. Yes, they have. Two, are they open to talk to anybody about the problem that you have had? Yes. Did you contact them? No. Well, go back and contact them. You have 30 days by law to remediate this website. If they've already started the process, note this perfect. How often?
know even go back to the chef I can cook the same dish a hundred times but maybe one goes out slightly subpar. The person complains what do we do? We replace it we correct it we remediate right there and then the same with acts website accessibility providing you started and you've provided something now you get the option to remediate and repair because 80% of the people are going to be happy with what you provide them.
So gonna be a small minority that don't. But if you rely on just that little free plug-in widget, A, it's not up to 2023 standard, it's not up to 2.2, isn't it? 2.1, and it doesn't meet double A criteria either. So you're opening yourself up in a legal stance and to be tracked because the ambulance chases are out there looking for people that just put a free widget onto their website and say, aha.
Demand letter time, lawyers and court cases, bad reputation.
Now I know that didn't answer all the questions that you probably came across, but hopefully it did highlight where
Bernie (26:26)
Well if if a company has a website up and running, is there a place they can go and say, assess my website for level
Trevor (26:35)
Yes, there are a lot of websites out there will provide a free audit. Most of them are put your URL website in here, test it, and we'll provide you with a solution. Unfortunately, most of them only provide a solution by putting the accessibility menu on the on the website.
You think, that's that's kind of cool. That only costs us a few dollars a month. Thank you very much. I'm accessible. No, you're not, because you still haven't addressed the remediation of the website. That's where the cost of those websites come into play, and that's when you need somebody who's a specialist to go in and recode it. The web developer, web coder, they are coming along. In North America, it's a lot easier than people think. The IRS actually allow any company.
To put their website into remediation and accessibility and will allow you to claim back $5,000 each year in tax credits.
On the rest of the world, pay attention. If we want everybody to be accessible, incentivize the companies and do it. The law in America has been out for like 33, 34 years.
Bernie (27:38)
Well.
Trevor (27:39)
And of course, when the those laws came out, you're not allowed to put disabled people into a category where everybody else is not meant to accommodate. Websites weren't created. And that's where
The gray area comes in. The Department of Justice in three years ago actually determined that websites are places of accommodation. And because of that, now this is where the US government have now said by April 2026, next month, all government, state businesses or government funded businesses have to provide an accessible website. So you see, it's come to the point. If it's government funded,
third party vendors, or you are registered in the state as a public service, your website has to be accessible. Which means in the next two to three years, all businesses are going to have to follow and have an accessible website.
Bernie (28:31)
So we've we touched on accessibility.
Now about data compliance. So
What type of data has to be compliant? And and what do you mean by compliance? Compliance with a regulation, I get that part, but what what are you hunting for? Or what are they hunting for? Or what are we all hunting for, maybe as may be the best way to ask that question.
Trevor (28:48)
Well, what we're all hunting for is for not our data to be freely given away to data brokers who then sell it so it we can then be targeted. That is the ultimate of what we're really looking at. We're looking at what happens if your company has a data breach. What data did you hold of mine? And where did it go? Now, today we're looking at the premise of
What is private and sensitive data? Well, a lot of people say, HIPAA. Yes, it is. But HIPAA in straightforward, clear facts, is no personal data of health should be on display to anybody apart from the people that are using it. And the only other people that can see that data is the patient themselves. So medical staff is fine. Health insurance companies, no. If I'm sat there
at the check-in of a clinic and the s the monitor is turned round for the patient to read, that is breaking HIPAA compliance because it's now visible to other people.
Don't get into here because that's a whole ball game. But generally, the rest of us, what we have to monitor and track, and you may have seen this when you've gone to new websites or any websites, you get more little pop-ups saying, Hey, do you allow our cookies? And everybody thinks, Do I accept or decline? Accept or decline? Well, hopefully they've got preferences. Click on the preferences and you can see what they are going to record. Most of them are going to record your location.
Your device, your IP address. And when you start inputting data onto the website, they're going to record that as well. Personal information now gets to be your email address, your name, your phone number, date of birth if it's required. Every data subject has the right to know what you're going to do with this data. Well, that's okay, you can book an appointment with me. Well, what businesses don't realize is that.
just by filling out a simple form which comes out, let's say a WordPress website may come as part of the website package. Personal information is being shared with three or four different other companies before the business owner even gets us here. You say, well, why is that? Well first of all, if you take who built the form, they would have access to it. But if not, the hosting company of the website will because the data has to pass through them.
It usually gets generated into an email. So it has to pass through, if you set it up on your Gmail account, it's going to pass through your Gmail account. And if it comes to your personal business account, it's going to pass through their hosting service as well. What about if you use something like Zoom or Canley, third-party apps to book an appointment? Well, that data is also shared with them.
Other data that a lot of businesses collect, and they shouldn't be, is card details for payment processing. Visa and MasterCard now say if you collect card details, you are the data processor. You're the payment processor. So therefore, if there's ever a breach or a claim back on I don't recognise these charges.
Visa and MasterCard used to swallow that as part of their business. Now they point it, well, hang on, you as the business owner, do you have the the the car details? If you look up and say yes, they say, Well, you never went through DSI security. You didn't record it, you don't have secure servers, you don't have secure authentication factors built in. So therefore, you are the breach, you are the weakest link of the chain.
So therefore, no, we're not going to refund the money. You refund the money. You take the loss.
That's where it's going to. So as a business owner, you have to consider what I'm doing with people's data. Every data subject has the right to three things: one, view, two, delete it, and three, amend it. And if you haven't got that right, that's when people will then go to the state or the government and look up and say, hey, I want my data rights because the state of Texas has it, the state of Florida.
Canada have it, Switzerland and Europe have it, and it doesn't matter where you do business. Again, I'll repeat that. Doesn't matter where you do business. The rights and the law protects the end user, the data subject, and it's where they reside. So if I'm a person in South America and I go to Australia website, I'm protected by the rights of where I reside in South America.
Even though Australia have their own data privacy rules. The same if anybody comes from Europe and they come to you in Canada or the US. If they're saying I'm a EU resident, I'm protected by those rules. If I'm a resident in Florida and I go to Texas, I have the rights of my data protection from Florida, even though the business is in Texas.
Bernie (33:27)
When does someone come to you? What is the trigger for them to realize, and assuming they don't have a data privacy breach, which which means they're already, you know, they're everybody's kind of under the gun. But when should someone come up and go, hmm, I got this website, it's been up and running and maybe a couple of years. I think I've done everything right.
How often do I look at it and when do I come to see the web detector?
Trevor (33:48)
Very good question. Most business owners probably never would because I think most people, if they don't know the law, they ignore it. And in the state of law, we know that ignorance isn't a justification to be prosecuted. So we have to do due diligence. How would a business owner get to hear of me? Usually by maybe they've heard from my networking partners.
Podcasts like this, it's very quick and easy to have a review of where you sit. The news broadcasting elements occasionally might put, is your website accessible? What are you doing about data breaches? It's very small, and the opportunity to highlight that your business might not be compliant is very difficult. I will admit that, yes.
But I think as more and more people get aware of fines, bad reputation, lawsuits, demand letters, that news starts spreading. And then that's when you realize, I wonder if my website is correct. I wonder the last time I looked at it. The frequency you should look at it, it should be ongoing. It should be part of your business strategy, it should be part of the business plan.
And I think a lot of small businesses they don't know how to run or set up a business effectively so it's protected. I know how to build widget A. I'm gonna sell widget A. I'll make a website, I'll get on social media. Well, all I know and my skill set, my authority is the expertise in building widget A's. They don't know how to run business. I might ask a coach. Well, some coaches would tell you about strategy.
But again, they haven't got into the depth of the compliance element.
It's all a matter of educating, telling people, these are the places you should be concerned of. People stay away from lawyers until they have problems. But probably a lawyer would tell you, you should have this. But then also a lot of lawyers also are not aware of how their business should operate in a digital aspect compared because they're concentrating what the law states.
We fail as business owners on knowing where to find these resources. It's people like us that actually help people to discover them.
Bernie (35:50)
With the privacy and with the accessibility, does AI offer a benefit? Does AI also offer a leaky sieve? Because large language models, if you don't own it, right? Hey it goes into a mothership somewhere and it becomes part of a training exercise. And you know, that's why they suggest you don't put your really critical details in the wild and into an open open pot. Does AI
Add a complexity to this, does AI offer part of the solution? What say you?
Trevor (36:20)
A little bit above. A little bit above. You can actually use AI to help monitor changes of a website. You can use AI to look for the flaws that a human may have missed. If you know the criteria of what makes a website compliant, you just have to plug it in. There are some good tools, there's some poor tools, but there's no perfect tool. Again, like humans, the the the weakest link is always the
The input criteria from another human with AI. The AI learning from AI, yes, but again, like you say, it's a knowledge part and eventually we can get there. But they're so complicated. so yes, they can help. But also, everybody's sti touting and selling some form of AI. We just don't know if it's doing the job we want it to do, because we were unknowledgeable.
of the requirements that we wanted to be fixed in the first place.
So yes, it can help, it can hinder. At least if you're starting with some compliance with AI, I use a lot of it for monitoring to check when there are changes. here's a no law change, or here's a little tweak in how Google wants you to handle the trying to think what they call it. You know, that you get that little box where you tick that you're a human.
Bernie (37:31)
Capture.
Trevor (37:32)
Thank you. Well, they've changed the laws on that. Well, obviously you need to change that. Not every business is going to know that. But if you have a company who provides service for it, we can change you, we can now recommend what to do in place of that. So by using that capture, you may not know of it how those changes come up to date. But if I had to rely on Google to tell me and it comes in via email, I may well miss it.
With AI, they can warn me and send a little warning. Hey, by the way, we got some changes to do. So yeah, they're good and bad.
Bernie (38:04)
Well we've covered a lot of ground, you know, Trevor, and I I'm gonna say I appreciate this. Las Vegas. What was the story behind Las Vegas and showing up on the on on the stage there? What's the story behind that as a segue?
Trevor (38:17)
well, that that's a v very interesting one. So a lot of people said, I want to be on stage on Las Vegas and I said, if we're done that, why? you know, you can be famous. Well, I'm not famous and I've been on stage. So yeah, it just happened to be that for one night only I appeared on a stage show. Part of it, in Vegas. How did it happen? Well, a couple nights prior to that, I was called out the audience to be a participant of
a magic show and reward was to go to this other show and then I went to this other show and then he called a participant to be up on stage. And of course being the bit of the clown that I am and it was clowning around and comedy. People believe that I was actually part of this show. are you really a guest or were you just part of the actual show? No, I'm not part of the show. That's just me naturally. you were so funny. So that's how I had managed to appear on stage. It was by chance, but
At the end of the day it's like, Well, if you drop me into a pool of water, I'm either gonna do one of two things. Sit to the bottom, or I'm just gonna go with the flow. And I tend to go with the flow.
Bernie (39:18)
Love it.
Folks, Trevor's offering a special web audit for for you. Head to adaaudit.thewebdetective dot online and book yours today. And if this conversation has tweaked you, anyway, hang on. is my website actually performing the way it should? Not only because of legal obligations, but also to reach your customer base, you know, to be the best you can be. go find out and reach out to Trevor.
He's there at the webdetective.online and get that investigation booked out. I'd also like to say thank you to Kat Hurd, because I believe Kat Hurd is how we cross paths to start off with, you know. So and she does social media and she works hand in hand with you. And it's it's it's always been good. And Trevor has also been on season one and season three and part of season four already. So he's he's definitely a return guest.
Very knowledgeable gentleman. And I've re again, I just reiterate, reach out to Trevor because he has that knowledge base. It can help your business succeed even more. And you know, sometimes you don't even know you have that problem. Now that's that's kind of the key part, And just finding out that there's a gap. It does work around not just improving the website, but how your business is getting discovered, remembered, whether it earns customer confidence.
Because if the customer is confident and they feel that there's a trust factor that's being built, they'll come back to you. And he's in the world where small businesses don't have to shout to be heard, they just have to show up the right way. And to reach us, it's knack4business.com. And use our chat bot to find out about other episodes and explore our community and book a call with us. Till next time.